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Topic: Do you think Jam is funny? (Read 3919 times)

Had a great ride listening to all of Blue Jam whilst cooking over a lockdown week. Realised I'd become deeply embarrassed to have it on speakers in the presence of housemates at certain points.

Genuinely I think it's Morris' best work? I think, however, in my circle of friends, and I suppose personally, some of it is barely defensible in certain topics it makes comedy out of (a few rape jokes and similar no-go).

Actually I thought a lot about when the humour punches down a bit. I like to tell myself those bits were written by Graham Linehan.

That's interesting as apparently Linehan had that problem with the TV version of Blue Jam, and possibly the main radio show by extension...

'You’ve said that you don’t particularly like writing very dark stuff, yet you contributed to Jam, which has got to be amongst the darkest comedy of the last ten years…?Jam wouldn’t be my favourite thing of Chris’s, and it was the one where I didn’t really feel like we were contributing a lot. Its mood was so grim that I just found it difficult to join in. I think that Chris [Morris] was just interested in tying people in moral knots – giving them a moral problem and then just twisting it so they have to do something awful to get out of the first moral problem. Although this is a secondary impulse for him, he’s also interested in pushing buttons that haven’t been pushed in comedy in people; making them laugh in a way that they’re not used to.'

That's interesting as apparently Linehan had that problem with the TV version of Blue Jam, and possibly the main radio show by extension...

'You’ve said that you don’t particularly like writing very dark stuff, yet you contributed to Jam, which has got to be amongst the darkest comedy of the last ten years…?Jam wouldn’t be my favourite thing of Chris’s, and it was the one where I didn’t really feel like we were contributing a lot. Its mood was so grim that I just found it difficult to join in. I think that Chris [Morris] was just interested in tying people in moral knots – giving them a moral problem and then just twisting it so they have to do something awful to get out of the first moral problem. Although this is a secondary impulse for him, he’s also interested in pushing buttons that haven’t been pushed in comedy in people; making them laugh in a way that they’re not used to.'

According to the Disgusting Bliss biography of Chris Morris, Linehan and his writing partner Arthur Matthews contributed, amongst some other sketches, the scene in episode 6 of the TV series with the security guard trying to warn people about an empty lift shaft.

According to the Disgusting Bliss biography of Chris Morris, Linehan and his writing partner Arthur Matthews contributed, amongst some other sketches, the scene in episode 6 of the TV series with the security guard trying to warn people about an empty lift shaft.

See, I quite liked that. One of the very rare new pieces in the show and something which actually made proper use of the format change.

I love Blue Jam and Jam but they don't make me laugh at all. I think they're clever and strange and uncannily specific and this gets an ''oooh love it'' out of me but not an actual laugh It's been clear for such a long time that Graham Linehan doesn't have much integrity at all and backpedals on past decisions constantly so who the fuck really knows how much he did contribute and how much he didn't. He's the JK Rowling of 90s to 2000s comedy

"That just about sez it, now here's a man who gets turned on by cold porcelain and the smell of harpic and now he wants to murder Paul!"

A lot of satire is really on the nose nowadays and I love how Blue Jam was sort of open to interpretation a lot of the time, like listening to a song where the artist gives you the raw material but you have to do some of the heavy lifting yourself, putting it together and deciding exactly what it means to you.

I'll have to give it a relisten, but yeah, I thought it was funny. I can remember I was depressed at the time and it was the only thing that'd make me laugh so I'd stay up until silly o'clock hiding under my bedsheets, listening on a ghettoblaster, stifling my giggles so I didn't wake my mam and dad.

I hear the fears that it may have become a victim of that whole edgelord/dark comedy phase, looking back, that it might seem dated, but I'm guessing not. It was so confident in it's tone, even when it was pushing the "dark" a little too far, it was very knowing in it's impishness.

I just random-watched episode 3 and can definitely say Jam is still really funny. From the very first line of the opening monologue to the sketch and throughout pretty much. The only issue really are the choice of video effects, quite a few of which have aged very badly and no longer enhance the comedy or atmosphere and quite often detract from it. The doctor sketch because of the way it was filmed was probably not quite as effective as it should have been. There’s still loads that held up really well though, like The TV lizards sketch. More nightmarish than laugh out loud but still good and I loved Eldon’s increasingly histrionic performance and I did laugh when he drops to the floor from rage and the wife starts beating him up in the last seconds of sketch. The wordless abortion clinic skit - Very very funny. The shop robber with a gun in his chest - very visceral, still shocking. The competitive parents sabotaging other children’s school places sketch I think is substantively the funniest in the whole episode. Loads of great lines and good reveals with the t-shirts and them chopping their son’s finger off. “If they don’t give him a place now I will be f*@#ing livid”.

Is there anywhere to find the higher quality Blue Jam downloads from the last page in one place? The individual downloads just won't play ball on my computer.

Try jDownloader. You can just copy all those links as a single block of text and let it do the work for you - it'll detect them, add them to a queue, and you just have to hit the start button. Shouldn't even need a mega account.

Try jDownloader. You can just copy all those links as a single block of text and let it do the work for you - it'll detect them, add them to a queue, and you just have to hit the start button. Shouldn't even need a mega account.

Watched it when I was 15 and had never so weirded-out by something. Turned it off mid-episode, but it stayed with me all week and I ended up tuning in the following week and it started to grow on me. Same thing with Brasseye, turned an episode off in "disgust" but it just hung around with me, and I had to revisit it. So Chris Morris quite literally pushed boundaries for me :)

Also I really loved DV stuff back then, 28 days later and Adam and Joe's cheaper sketches, so for me the visuals have a lot of character of the era. I saw it way, way before I even heard of Blue Jam too, so perhaps that's also a big swayer of influence.